Aswin Punathambekar

David Lydon-Staley, wearing round glasses and a light blue button-up shirt, smiling in front of a wooden bookshelf filled with books

Congrats to @David Lydon-Staley on his promotion to Associate Professor with tenure!

He spoke about what this milestone means and what’s next in his research and teaching journey.

Read more: www.asc.upenn.edu/news-events/...

Dear TIAA-CREF university reps., please don't send emails now about "growing your retirement nest egg." Just don't.

Canvas is “popular” in the way that back pain is popular — a lot of people have to deal with it.

As #scms25 approaches (first of the post-twitter era!), feel free to follow this conference feed in Bluesky to track the discourse:

Journal/book editors - if you are looking (and you should be!) to broaden your focus beyond the anglophone West, take note - there is a lot of excellent scholarship on African film and media at #SCMS25.

For this unsung philosopher, metaphors make life an adventure | Psyche Ideas Susanne K Langer understood the indispensable power of metaphors, which allow us to say new things with old words

Susanne Langer's luminous theory of metaphor—a new essay by Sue Curry Jansen and me, in @aeon.co

‘Three major figures in analysis of #race in contemporary culture have joined forces to craft a powerful critique of recent mutations in mediated #racism.’
- David Hesmondhalgh

Anamik Saha, @gavant.bsky.social, @francescasobande.bsky.social ‘The Anti-Racist Media Manifesto’ is OUT NOW!

This Wednesday (3/26), please join CARGC Associate Director Juan Llamas-Rodriguez @llamasjr.bsky.social for a screening of Y Tu Mamá También and the release of his book on the film clals.sas.upenn.edu/events/juan-....

Farewell to Jonathan Sterne We are very sad to learn of the death of communication scholar Jonathan Sterne, after a long battle with cancer. He was 54 years old. Sterne was James McGill Professor of Culture and Technology at McGill University. He chronicled his illness on his blog and wrote about it in his scholarship as well. Senior Executive Editor Ken Wissoker says, “We have lost one of our most original and brilliant thinkers. A kind, generous person, and a true genius. Jonathan would take a commonplace understanding, open it up, rethink its history and how it actually worked. The results—whether about sound as culturally and historically specific or our ideas about impairment—changed what thinking was possible. His untimely passing is a deep and unfathomable loss.” Sterne’s scholarship is concerned with the cultural dimensions of communication technologies, especially their form and role in large-scale societies. He is the author of _The Audible Past_ (2003), a now-classic text that explores the cultural origins of sound reproduction; _MP3: The Meaning of a Format_ (2012), which unpacked the history and meaning of a common audio format; and _Diminished Faculties_(2022), in which he wrote about his own impairment due to a paralyzed vocal chord. Sterne also wrote articles for the Duke University Press journals _differences_ and _Social Text_. He was a co-editor (with Lisa Gitelman) of the book series Sign, Storage, Transmission, which publishes books offering new ways of thinking through the interconnectedness of knowledges, technologies, subjectivities, and cultures. Sterne also contributed chapters to two edited collections published by the Press: _Keywords in Sound_ and _Digital Sound Studies_. _The Audible Past_ received the 2004 Book of the Year award from the National Communication Association Critical and Cultural Studies Division. MP3 received the 2014 Katherine Singer Kovacs Book Award of Distinction from the Society for Cinema and Media Studies and the Association for Recorded Sound Collections Certificate of Merit in the Best General Research in Recorded Sound category. And _Diminished Faculties_ was the winner of the 2023 Gertrude J. Robinson Book Prize, presented by the Canadian Communication Association. Sterne received his doctorate from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1999. He taught at the University of Pittsburgh before moving to McGill University in 2004. He was a beloved teacher and served as a PhD advisor for dozens of students. He was generous with his time, reviewing many book manuscripts for Duke University Press and other presses and serving on countless committees at his own institution and around the world. Rob Drew, author of _Unspooled_ , reflects on Sterne’s generosity: “I met Jonathan Sterne in an airport after a conference in the early 2000s. I knew his work but assumed he didn’t know me from Adam. The first words out of his mouth were, ‘Your book rocks!’ I thought, does this guy read everything? Twenty years later I finally had another manuscript and thought it might be good for the Signs Storage Transmission series. I emailed him and within a half hour got an email from Ken Wissoker. I got a contract, but more than that it was Jon’s work on MP3s and music formats that allowed me to develop my whole line on cassettes. Though I never got to work closely with him, I’m another guy out there in cult-stud academe who felt his positive influence.” Lucas Hilderbrand, author of _The Bars Are Ours_ and _Inherent Vice_ , also benefited from Sterne’s help when publishing with us. “ _The Audible Past_ inspired much of my thinking for my dissertation and first book,” he says. “When I submitted my manuscript, Jonathan was my top request for a reader, and he modeled academic generosity both in his attentive feedback and in inviting conversation by disclosing his identity. He has been a mentor and a model for how to live an intellectual life. He invented fields of thought and shaped lives.” Executive Editor Courtney Berger worked with Sterne on his latest book, _Diminished Faculties_. She says, “Not only was Jonathan a tremendous scholar, he was a dedicated mentor, friend, and colleague. He drew people into his orbit with his honesty, generosity, and sharp wit. He was eager to share what he knew—about writing, teaching, and navigating academic life—and he was just as eager to learn. I feel lucky to have worked alongside Jonathan, to have learned from him, and to have been his friend.” Marketing Manager Laura Sell worked with Sterne all three of his books. “Publicists do have favorite authors,” she says, “and Jonathan was one of my favorites. He was gracious and appreciated the people who worked behind-the-scenes on his books. He was also extremely funny and we bonded over a shared love of cats. I’m proud to have had a part in disseminating his important scholarship and feel lucky to have known him personally.” We send our condolences to Jonathan’s partner, Carrie Rentschler, also a Duke University Press author, and to his family, colleagues, students and friends. ### Join the Conversation: * Tweet * * Email * Bluesky * More * * * * Reddit * Print * Threads * Like Loading...

"Farewell to Jonathan Sterne", a nice collection of memories posted by Duke University Press 💔 https://dukeupress.wordpress.com/2025/03/21/farewell-to-jonathan-sterne/

The US leadership in science and academia has created global public goods in terms of associational life, publishing, and conference infrastructure. Importantly the funding of US scientists enables teams across the world. This is not zero sum and we will all suffer if American academia suffers

In an effort to make scholarship on African film and media at #SCMS25 visible, please note and share widely these papers and panels with an African focus.

The Trump administration cancels $400 million in grants and contracts to Columbia University.

They adopted a posture of total submission and it bought them precisely nothing. A lesson for the Trump era www.nytimes.com/live/2025/03...

Savour whatever's left of the Rohit-Kohli magic in ODIs The Rohit-Kohli relationship does not feel like one of the greatest bromances ever told, but they have made each other greater for India

For cricket lovers, here is a gem of a piece by @espncricinfo.com's Andrew Fidel Fernando. It's nice to see that there is still some space left for writers to indulge their writerly selves. www.espncricinfo.com/story/ct25-f....

One of the more sad yet fascinating things happening in America right now is watching a country known for small d democracy, & everyday political participation really flailing at achieving collective action against the rapid destruction of the federal government.

Surreal to watch Trump and Vance so thoroughly humiliate themselves and give the rest of the world the final motivation they need to unite against the Putin surrogacy. It’s so shocking!

How Elon Musk Executed His Takeover of the Federal Bureaucracy The operation was driven with a frenetic focus by the billionaire, who channeled his resentment of regulatory oversight into a drastic overhaul of government agencies.

The headline, the breathless reporting, the only slightly hidden awe: the illegal hollowing out of the American state as covered by the paper of record. An utter disgrace: www.nytimes.com/2025/02/28/u...

‘Cowardice’: Pa. lawmakers express disappointment with Penn’s DEI response at meeting with admin. One lawmaker said that Penn “has made a cowardly move” in “rushing to heed dog-whistle demands from a feckless federal leadership.”

Apparently the DEI rollback @upenn.bsky.social was shaped by a "matrix of decision makers." Now there's a phrase I didn't think I'd hear in academic admin-world, but here we are. www.thedp.com/article/2025...

Penn faculty express concern over lack of institutional support, funding cuts for DEI research Professors expressed concerns about the future of federal funding for DEI-related research and a lack of institutional support for their work from Penn.

www.thedp.com/article/2025...

Philly, come out to 2000 Market right now and say it loud: hands off our healthcare, hands off our research, hands off our jobs!

Video obtained by CNN shows the rear landing gear of the jet buckling and the right wing shearing away in a fireball after the plane landed hard on the runway.

I hope America is as lucky as the delta jet - everyone survives but the right wing explodes

1/ I am seeing a lot of comments on the slashing of NIH support along the lines of “universities should just spend their huge endowments.”

I’m the last person to cheer on the institutional stratification rising endowments have contributed to. But let me explain why this is not a solution.

If only university administrators would grasp this 😥

The US finally catching up to the rest of the world...

It should be a source of profound embarrassment that a bunch of FedSoc lifers are taking a more vocal and principled stand against the corrupt Eric Adams deal than most elected Dems.

Jasdeep Singh Degun - Ulterior Motives (Official Video) YouTube video by Real World Records

Absolutely exquisite -- Jasdeep Singh Degun, Ulterior Motives on Real World Records

youtu.be/1p-FSO7-e8s?...

Welcome! You are invited to join a webinar: Defending Public Research Webinar. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email about joining the webinar. This month, the Trump administration has begun an attack on public research to further their extreme, right-wing agenda: freezing federal grants, undermining university budgets, censoring research on ...

On Monday, join academic workers for a webinar on science funding, & NIH indirect cost rate, and the threats to research from the the Trump administration.

us06web.zoom.us/webinar/regi...

Dear Fellow College Presidents: We Need to Do More Than Wait This One Out Why civil society needs university leaders to speak up.

From Michael Roth, president of Wesleyan University: slate.com/life/2025/02...

I feel like we are all watching JD tell Usha, over and over — “Babe, I’m just not that into you or the kids.”

A grim glimpse of what we are likely to see coming at the NEH as well. For context, the NEA was previously focused on "projects that extend the reach of the arts to underserved groups/communities" - who needs that when you have red! white! and blue!